Astro Bot

Team Asobi is ready to offer a truly enjoyable experience, but exclusively for owners of Sony's latest console, and the launch of the highly anticipated title is finally here. We're talking about the PlayStation 5 exclusive, Astro Bot, who returns to our screens with a new series of adventures after the success of Astro's Playroom, free game that seemed like a PlayStation 5 and DualSense tech demo.

Now the Sony mascot becomes a real and official protagonist of a complete experience, or rather, “a grand-scale space adventure,” as Nicolas Doucet, Studio Director at Team Asobi, stated at the time of launch during the May 31, 2024 State of Play. We tested the beautiful levels that await you in space platform on Sony consoles, and we can't wait to tell you more in our review!

Astro Bot: A Space-Grade Adventure

To fulfill the requests of the Astro Bot fans, who are eager to get their hands on a true sequel to Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, Astro Bot catapults us into 80 different worlds. Each with its own characteristics, but above all with so much dynamic interaction from the player, who, although he will have to face the various levels in single-player mode only, will still be able to observe the thousand possible actions that can be performed with Astro, as well as guide him with the movement of our controller itself. But let's take things in order, and start with the fact that Astro Bot seems to want to follow with determination the path laid out by its direct predecessor, Astro's Playroom, which showed the extraordinary potential of the DualSense controller and paid homage to almost thirty years of PlayStation history.

 

This new adventure of Sony's lovable little robot takes us to explore 6 galaxies and over 80 levels, as mentioned above, extremely different from each other, with many diverse and truly interesting settings to explore, capable of testing Astro's many abilities as he must save the little bots, in varying quantities from one level to another. We will find volcanoes about to erupt, lush green forests, glaciers, desert ruins, and decidedly futuristic landscapes, inspired by various Sony exclusive titles that have made PlayStation history. We won't reveal too much about this, but references to Nathan Drake from Uncharted, Aloy from the Horizon series, and Kratos from God of War are just a few inspirations that might appear on our screens.

Old acquaintances, new worlds to explore

Undoubtedly, some of our old acquaintances manage to play a rather important role, helping Astro save the day in the various levels where he will have to solve puzzles and test all the technical potentials offered by Sony's home console, with an interesting union between software and hardware. In effect, the desire to citationalism what made Astro's Playroom so appealing extends even to the new powers the little robot will be able to rely on, well 15 total abilities and all new, to discover and put into practice at every possible obstacle we encounter.

Among these, the Twin-Frog gloves wink at LittleBigPlanet 2, which shoot extendable grappling hooks useful for clinging to suspended surfaces in the void to create a path, while in combat they can be used to bounce bombs off enemies or flip oversized opponents. Nevertheless, the Barkster (bulldog booster) will be used to break through glass and win unlikely sumo matches, momentarily stop time to create stable platforms, and resort to the giant sponge that allows absorbing considerable amounts of water to become a titan and sow destruction within the surrounding landscapes.

The new adventure from Team Asobi will also feature underwater levels, which are truly interesting. Amidst jellyfish and other marine creatures, they'll push us to explore shipwrecks likely bursting with hidden collectibles waiting to be brought back to the surface. This is a very curious and enjoyable gameplay addition, both aesthetically, thanks to the graphics engine's performance, and technically, for the possibilities it offers through gameplay, making it varied and multifaceted.

Interesting variety and performance

Regarding new features and variety, the new Astro Bot presents over 70 never-before-seen enemies, including colossal bosses to defeat at the end of each galaxy, with different designs to discover and equally interesting abilities to study to understand how best to confront them, and of which, again, we will give no spoilers. There will be many challenges that Astro must overcome to find his scattered crew, and at the same time test the reflexes of platforming enthusiasts.

At first glance, one would say that Astro Bot has all the right ingredients to challenge the giants of the platform genre, with the boys at Team Asobi having developed new ways to fully exploit the special features of the DualSense, as had already happened with Astro's Playroom. A title that truly surprised us for the cleanliness of the game and graphic engine, without no flaws in terms of fluidity and aesthetically very high quality.

In conclusion

Asobi's 3D platformer really seems like a substantial evolution of all the work done previously and that we had already seen in the course of what has been produced in this series. It promises to represent one of the most interesting games coming to PS5 this year. Perhaps not too long, not so much for the quantity of levels and worlds, but for the complexity of the levels themselves, which are basically a sequence of fluid actions and truly well-curated in details and special effects. Thanks to the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, in addition to the movements of the entire controller we use to steer the glider, the PlayStation 5's joystick also plays a crucial role in the gaming experience, which could bring PS5's sensory gaming to a completely new level. Absolutely not to be missed.